The Leadership and Empowerment Institute, Inc.
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There is a psychological principle that says it is difficult to go into our future until we face our past. It provides us with an opportunity to learn. Old information is useful as we create new possibilities. It is said, those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it. Across The Great Divide We live in two Americas, separate and unequal. The history of our descent into this great divide is written large and imprinted in our nation’s psyche. Three hundred years of slavery, race prejudice, and white supremacy rolls across our landscape like a giant tidal wave, over and over again. One America is like a shining city on a hill. It is prosperous and industrious. There are resources and opportunities for the good life, American style. The Shining City The idea and reality of America works well for the people that live here. The media, healthcare, education, the financial system are controlled by the people who live here and exist for their benefit. This America is primarily white and Anglo Saxon. In this America, privilege has a white male face. The women and children who live in the homes of the white men of privilege are beneficiaries of his privilege. But should the women and children of these men of privilege find themselves outside of their protection, they will find their existence difficult and harsh. Much of the privilege in the shining city is unearned. This America is a race constructed system in which privilege is granted by skin color. In the shining city, white is the color of privilege. This America is hierarchical in nature. Power flows from the top down. Almost all systems are organized in this way, even in the family. The advent of the women’s movement offered a modicum of challenge to this organization, but change is hard fought and power rarely, if ever, concedes itself. Those who live in this America are not subject to the experience of the other America. They are not required to see, to acknowledge, value the experience of their sisters and brothers across the great divide. The Struggling Society In the other America, survival in much more difficult. It is composed of the others, mostly minorities and the poor. Adequate material resources are almost non-existent. These Americans can find themselves for generations mired in the humiliation and degradation of race prejudice, classism. They can find themselves stuck in a system that is organized to provide for their own, those who are white and privileged. A system in which the false dichotomies, the notion of them Vs. us rules. In this system those that are considered the others, People of Color, the poor, are not subject to the riches, the bounty of America’s goodness. The bounty does not flow easily into their coffers. This America is subject to the attitudes and prejudices of those who live in the shining city. Since they control few of the resources, have little political or economic power they struggle to acquire those resources with which they can eke out a living. Living well is at best difficult because the others are subject to the laws, rules, policies created by those from the shining city. Those who live in the other America can become frustrated and profoundly despairing. The Divide Looking across the great divide, they can see what is possible in America. And they know that crossing the great terrain to get to the other side is arduous and dangerous. Emotionally they become depressed and are subject to a deep despair that shapes their reality. They become alienated and can abandon even the most basic rules required for civilized social discourse. Those who live in the shining city continuously remind the others that all they have to do is work hard and play by the rules. They delude themselves into easy explanations about the troubles the others face. They say it is because the fathers are absent, or the mothers are on welfare, or because the others are not well educated, or the number of teen age pregnancies or a bad home environment. Those shining citizens go home in the evening comforted by the idea that whatever is going on over there is not about them. And when it is suggested that just perhaps the trouble the others are facing might be due to the history of slavery, racism and classism...that maybe there is a system in place that increasingly works against the others, a system that makes it difficult for their lives to work as well as those who live at the top of the hill -- the shining citizens then say, well that was then, this is now. Racism is over they say. Why can’t we just move on. Many of them will say that racism is not their problem. That it occurred during the time of their parents, grandparents and great, great grandparents. Many of them will say that they have no responsibility for the actions of their fore-parents. But these same citizens will gladly honor what we call the accomplishments of the founding fathers. They will claim the likes of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams as one of their own and will honor them. They seem to have little difficulty reaching back in the past for some things. The spirit of honesty, integrity and truth-telling would require that there memory be less selective. If we are to benefit from the gold in our past, then we must acknowledge and accept responsibility for the gore. The others know that the cards are stacked against them, that the playing field is uneven. They know who has the privilege and the advantage. They live the truth as written in the words of the Billie Holiday song; Them that’s got shall get and them that’s not shall lose. They know that for many of them the divide may never be crossed. The others know that if hard work and diligence were really the ticket to success many of them would have already arrived. They know that it will take extraordinary talent, skill, diligence, perseverance to live the good life, and then at best it is the luck of the draw. They know that they have a much more difficult row to hoe. Much more than that which is required from those who live on the hill in the shining city. And they know in America, the land of opportunity, it ain’t right, it just ain’t right. But those who live in the shining city are looking out across the divide and they are feeling a creeping disease. Leadership, perseverance, and desperation have led those across the other side to organize. The Civil Rights Movement and The Women’s Movement are clear examples that there is something in the human spirit that will rise up in the face of oppression and indifference. Some hear the voices of anger, rage and despair from the others and realize that the passionate timbre of these voices are being raised against them. Other citizens are becoming more and more aware of the past and the present. Those on the hill are feeling isolation. They feel the weight of their privilege. |
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